"In the absence of light, darkness prevails."
DUDE. I used to be good at updating. What the hell happened?
Anywho, I thought I would post some creative writing pieces. I'm going to post them chronologically because that'll make more sense in the long run. (Not that they will make sense because I have decided to write sci-fi, and we all know what that means.) So, here's the first bit which is more of a character sketch than anything else. It deals with Ilsa, a woman who has to live in a tank.
ITCHYOLOGY
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The woman in the tank presses her hand against the glass, but there is no one on the other side. Once upon a time the room used to be filled with scientists and there was always someone on the other side of the glass. There was always someone monitoring her, checking her progress. And sometimes, sometimes one of the doctors would humor her and place their hand on the other side of the glass, mirror hers.
The doctors used to think it was adorable when she would place her hand on the glass. “She’s so human,” they would remark, as if she was an animal. But she wasn’t an animal. She’s not an animal.
Not an animal.
Human. She’s human. Human, human, human, human. She repeats the word in her mind over and over again. Some days she thinks that’s all she does. Because if she keeps telling herself that she’s still human, if she keeps believing that she’s still human, then maybe it’ll be true.
She spreads her fingers wide and looks at the webbing between her fingers. It is thin, translucent, and green. She doesn’t remember when it started to grow, and it didn’t hurt when coming in. Not like the gills. The transition from gills to lungs had been painful, a transition that she almost didn’t live through. Her lungs had quit working properly before her gills had fully developed, so for a time she was stuck in limbo-couldn’t breathe underwater and unable to take in air. She was drowning and suffocating, and her chest was on fire. She can remember the beeping of monitors and all the tubes that kept her alive, and that moment first, glorious moment when her gills fully developed and she could breathe once again.
She doesn’t remember what it feels like to breathe without gills.
She can’t live outside the tank, and that’s as terrifying as it is liberating. The others have either forgotten about her or think that she’s dead, and that’s fine with her. But if one of them should come across her, she can’t run from them. And what if one of them should break the tank? What then?
A hand presses itself on the other side of the glass. Inky black and with fingers far too long to be human. The flat features on the face pull into a smile. “Hello, Ilsa,” it says. “I brought you something to eat.”
Ilsa. That’s right. Her name is Ilsa.